Look at his form and look at the way he does chi sao - AWESOME fundamentals.
you’re joking right? In the footage I’ve seen off him playing Chi Sao the skill level seems quite low. A lot of swatting about and chasing of the hands. Heck, if Bruce was alive he’d be the kung fu version of fat Elvis by now anyway.
If I was to judge Bruce Lee, no matter how much I enjoyed his movies as a kid, by what I saw of him on the screen, high-side kicks, roundhouses and nunchucks, I would say he did Karate in Chinese clothing. Maybe against Chuck Norris in the COlloseum he showed some very basic trapping, nothing Aweseome by any means.
The best movie action I think I have seen, that I liked the flavor, was by the cop in Black Mask. I thought that guy moved well, martially, especially for his build. By those standards, movies, he’s amazing. He might be, who knows.
I will probably **** some JKD practitioners of by this statement but what the hell. I think because Bruce Lee never made it past the second form in WC he had to look for other techniques just because what he had learnt wasn’t enough.
I think the key thing missing from most of these posts is the words “In my opinion” 
Too bad.
It’s a pity none of you guys can touch hands with the now deceased Lee. He’d show you.
Not a single one of you guys - or any of the legitimate WC sifu I’ve seen - could TOUCH Bruce Lee in Wing Chun.
Only Yip Man had the skill to give Bruce Lee trouble, from what I’ve seen.
I think Ryu needs to make another phone call…
Who was he? You say he trained with Bruce?
Well actually i was thinking of challenging him… 
bruce lee’s wing chun? he only studied it for a few years, got as far as the chum kiu and bits of the dummy form. that’s nowhere near enough time or technique to begin to understand the art.
and gm yip man being the only one to give him trouble? bull****. even most jf/jkd bio sites tell the stories of how he would trick his fellow students by saying the instructors cancelled class due to illness so he could have a private lesson – which he got when wsl found out what kind of **** he was pulling. lee left those lessons bleeding and badly bruised every time.
and i’m not sure how bruce lee could ever be considered gm yip man’s top student, because he had sihings that had been studying with his sifu for many years before, and practiced even harder than he did.
or possibly take bruce lee’s own correspondence with his sihings – namely william cheung. modern politics aside, lee always looked up to cheung and on many an occasion, admitted that cheung was the best fighter he ever knew. it was NOT yip man who did most of lee’s teaching – it was william cheung. cheung was basically assigned to lee as a mentor – a true sihing.
not to discount lee’s ability, for talent he had in abundance. however, he was not the best, nor had he lived do i think he ever would have been the best. he was amazing, pure and simple, but never the best. and his wing chun? 3 years and he’s gm yip man’s top student? not by a longshot.
bruce was not, is not nor will he ever be the god he is made out to be. don’t believe me? have ryu give him a call and hear it straight from the dragon.
HuangKaiVun
You are probably right, but for the wrong reasons…let me explain…
Bruce Lee was an excellent athlete, and a pretty good martial artist. It is well known that he did not finish his WC. When he was in his prime, he had a solid foundation and he wast fast and strong, but what about now? Could he still maintain his speed strength?
The idea behind WC is to negate all of that and atleast try to level the playiing field. He had some basic concepts down very well, but seemed to rely on his athleticism.
Now, he is dead, so obviously we could debate this all day and never get anywhere. He was good, but his technique was still sloppy, atleast from a WC point of view, and he wouldnt have been able to maintain it without growth.
Dont get me wrong, I think he did some real good for CMA but he still needed to work. He had alot of ego and that can get weighty, sometimes too much to be able to work around.
You *****!!!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself!
No kidding, this guy had tha fastest double side snap kick I have ever seen and he (gasp!) used high kicks to the head! Something I would never do ! It took me a long time to learn to be soong enough to fade to the side of those kicks and they were definately too fast to grab. I only got inside of him once or twice in a year and a half.
sometimes seems to go hand in hand – wing chun and ego.
don’t get me wrong. i study the stuff, too. but wing chun seems to have more than its fair share of self-centeredness.
Rubthebhudda
Well, I would take it even ****her and say that all martial arts have ego issues. As martial artist I think most of us have to battle our egos to some degree, possibly more so then your ‘average’ person. I think it feeds it for sure.
It is so funny that many martial artist prefer to follow the thoughts of a movie star than those who where real martial arts experts!
I understand that he was an influence in the early seventies but we should have matured a little since those days. All his things were those of a frustrated man who was aware that he could not be “the” man in his style. It is a lot easier to become the grand master of a style by simply creating it. I dont think that he was knowledgable enough in his style to start discarding anything from it. He was still scratching the surface of wing chun when he started playing grand master with his cute sayings about " Be like water,shapeless, etc etc!" …And ,he was the guy telling us to leave our ego at the door!:rolleyes:
Btw, I saw his chi sau demo and it was exactly that…A demo! He was just entering flashy techniques on a willing guy.
I think it is better to really learn a martial art before starting to modify it for your own purposes. that is if you want some solid ground to build upon.
I’d like to start by saying that that quote Kung Lek posted was beautiful. Truly. 
Secondly, how is it that so many people presume to know what entailed Bruce Lee’s training? Because you read a few articles in a martial arts magazine? A couple books about the man maybe? Or were you by his side training with him every day of his life? Pretty strange to me, especially when we haven’t even really figured out what some of his weight workouts were! Sure, we’ve seen some notes…but any daily logs, nutritional logs, anything charting his progress? I haven’t read it but I have been told that “The Art of Expressing the Human Body” was nothing more than John Little’s conclusions based on notes that he was able to see. If you’ve ever read Little’s “Power Factor Training” then you have a good idea where his ‘conclusions’ come from, and they are not entirely sound. Not without merit mind you, but also not the “be-all-end-all” of exercise research.
The best chance to find out the truth of a story is to ask the subject themselves, and he ain’t available right now.
Mixing arts
In the system I study (founded 960 AD) We start learning the Southern style, then once that is well understood, the Northern style is taught. And finnalyy the Six Step Monkey Boxing.
theses are three DIFFERENT systems all developed or perfected by the Chao family, and have been taught in this mannor since the late Sung dynasty (As far as I know).
Each art of the system works different attributes.
Is it safe to say the system has “Cross training” built into it? If so, why? and does the fact that it’s been doen this way for close to a milininum say anything?
Does any one els practice a family system that teaches several styles in this mannor? How about your school, does it offere courses in more than one style?
What are the benifits or draw backs to this?
RD
I agree with the last part of that and the saying about the person trying to “fill” the holes in their main system reminds of the guy that hops from school to school looking for that “secret” in the shaolin arts not realizing the secret is hard work perseverance and determination.
Amen,
Shaolin36
I agree with that also which is why I only practice one system now and utilize the atributes of character that all my teachers possesed, not different styles.
“absorb what is useful” – the phrase
Mao Tse-tung in his writings entitled “On Protracted War” said “Absorb what is useful; reject what is useless and discard the rest”. I would think this is where Bruce Lee got his famous saying.
Whether Mao was quoting someone else – I’m not sure?
Did Bruce Lee study TCC??
Quicky Question.
Did Bruce Lee ever study Tai Chi??
A lot of his “famous” and “insight” sayings seem to come directly from the Tai Chi classics and treaties.
“You must be like Water” and others.
While I respect Bruce Lee for his achievement, I don’t hold him in high regard as a Martial Artist nor see him as the grea Figher that many people want to make him out.
Said that.
Who in the 70’s had the Skill and understanding of Chinese Arts in the West to really evaluate him.
Too many things about Bruce Lee are played out of proportion.
It is said that he was “SOOO” fast that the Cameras couldn’t record his moves.
Yep, true but the technology than was lower and most good MA could do that.
But than few made movies.
Have fun.